Friday, July 02, 2010

Infant History

For Level 1 Certificate of Pride in our Island's Story

Answer all questions. Faith-school pupils are excused from getting answers right owing to the indeterminacy of history and the distinction between sincerely held beliefs and mere legalistic facts. Fee-paying pupils should consult Table C for permitted cheating levels.

1. Stonehenge is one of Britain's most profitable neolithic sites. Discuss the role of market forces in its construction and the possibility that interference by a centralised government led to its present condition.

2. Was the Roman intervention in Britain (a) a humanitarian effort to spread the benefits of civilisation, (b) a rationally self-protective measure against Druidic extremism, or (c) an Italian defeat in the second round thanks to Scotland playing better than England?

3. Give an account of the spread of Anglicanism as promulgated by Augustine of Canterbury on the orders of Pope Gregory I.

4. Discuss perceptions of the Conquest of 1066 in terms of the effectiveness of Norman media relations, thereby having it both ways in terms of pro-English bias and might making right.

5. Show how Henry V's predilection for boiling alive those people he didn't agree with is a more or less minor quibble compared with the glory that was Agincourt.

6. Discuss either the East India Company or the Atlantic slave trade, accounting for the moderate and acceptable native casualties in terms of subcontinental railway networks or the rise of American democracy.

7. Write a 500-word counterfactual showing that the history of Ulster would have been incomparably more bloody if Cromwell and the English landlords had been soft on the Irish.

8. Write a 500-page counterfactual in the Phillip Blond tradition, showing what a great country Britain could be if we all lived in villages and knew our place.

3 Comments:

Like it.Of course,any students who mention the possibility that subcontinental railway networks are as effective at transporting troops with muskets as commuters with tiffin boxes will be sent to see the headmaster to account for themselves.